Tecmark UK Mobile Internet Usage Research

UK mobile internet usage statistics

Tecmark updated this research in August 2011. The most up to date version can be viewed here: Tecmark Mobile Internet Research August 2011.

We all know mobile Internet is growing. Many of you are a part of the growth, checking sports scores, browsing holidays, catching up on the news or even reading posts like this on your Smartphone. Whether you’re sitting in your lounge, standing around a supermarket or commuting, mobile devices are proving more popular than many thought possible for accessing the Internet.

With that in mind, at Tecmark we carried out some research of our own with a focus on the UK internet visitors. We took data from a number of websites in a number of different niche areas that gave us anything between 0.5 million and 1.5 million total website visits per month and we assessed how many were accessing these various sites from mobile devices.

We took our data from September 2009 right through to January 2011. We were pretty sure we would see an amazing growth over that period in terms of the percentage of a website’s users that are browsing from a mobile device and we were not wrong!

Key UK Mobile Internet Usage Findings

The PDF can be downloaded from the bottom of this page, but let us sum up for your our key findings.

  • In September 2009, just 0.02% of all UK web traffic originated from a mobile device. In January 2011 this figure was a staggering 8.09% (representing a growth of over 4000%)!

mobile internet usage increase UK

  • iPhone traffic accounts for around 4.5% of all UK website traffic – not just mobile traffic!
  • iPhone traffic accounts for more than half of mobile traffic.
  • More people browsed UK websites in January 2011 from an iPad than from all Android powered devices put together. In fact, that’s been the case since September 2010, just over 3 months after the first iPad was launched in the UK.
  • In January 2011, Apple devices accounted for more than 70% of all mobile traffic in the UK.
  • If growth continues at the rate it did for the latter part of 2010, by June 2011, 13% of UK web traffic will be of mobile origin.

Download the Tecmark Mobile Internet research paper

Posted on by in Apps

About Stacey Cavanagh

I'm the Head of Search at Tecmark and a lover of all things Internet and Apple. I'm a chronic #hashtagger, social media-er, compulsive blogger and a self confessed lover of inexcusably terrible jokes.

  • http://www.teoti.co.uk marksyzm

    Wait, so is that all Android devices put together i.e. phones and tablets against the iPad’s traffic or is that all Android tablets put together? Because the latter I understand more but the former just doesn’t sound feasible when you put Android mobile to iPhone statistics in the UK against each other. More people in the UK have Android phones now it seems: http://www.expertreviews.co.uk/mobile-phones/1283935/android-now-more-popular-than-iphone-in-uk but the tablet market has only just started with their release of Honeycomb in January

    • Stacey

      Our data indicates that’s all Android devices together. However, this data was from Sep 2009 to Jan 2011…. and since then Android popularity has surged. We plan to pull the same data out again in September this year to analyse how much that has changed.

  • Pingback: UK Mobile Internet Statistics August 2011 | Tecmark

  • http://www.bolehillfarm.co.uk chris swaap

    Any thoughts on how this curve may ‘top out’. I assume at some point the numbers will stabilise until the costs drop then take off again. I am debating when to start work on developing a ‘mobile’ friendly set of web pages. I am not sure it is worth the time yet.

    • http://www.twitter.com/tecmark Stacey

      Hi Chris,

      It makes sense that the growth would eventually slow down… But I don’t see growth stopping any time soon. Our prediction is that this time next year, almost 20% of web traffic in the UK will be mobile.

      If you haven’t already got a mobile version of your site, I reckon now’s the time to do it.

  • Shandyout

    I notice you plan to re-run the data in september, is that update available yet?

    Thanks

    • http://www.twitter.com/tecmark Stacey

      Hi Ryan.

      We updated in August instead with a view to doing so again in January next year. It’s so fast moving!

      Just emailed you info about the August update.

      Many thanks,

      Stacey

  • http://www.cambridgebluesquare.co.uk Richard Wyatt

    QR codes, iPad sales growth, along with other internet enabled phones will accelerate this trend. I’d like to see the next available data.

    Once it reaches 20% of the market, my punt is that it will take off until, as others have said, finding its “steady state” market acceptance. With all the owrk that means to be ready for it, I would be starting now, with mobile versions of sites, as reading standard sites on mobile phones, in particular, is tedious.

    • http://www.twitter.com/staceycav Stacey

      Completely agreed, Richard. I think if you don’t have a mobile friendly version of your website, you are already behind.

      Thanks for sharing your thoughts!

  • Scott

    Very interesting! Do you have data for 2012?